Pedwell’s rich study examines the diverse ways in which empathy is mobilised – from political speeches that uphold neoliberalism, to postcolonial literatures that refuse certain forms of empathic connection. Empathy is an affective relation often conceptualized in liberal and neoliberal thought as the imaginative and felt ability to “put oneself in the other’s shoes”.

Like the Charlie Hebdo images that merged debates about Islam with national discussions of same-sex marriage, comics play on multiple registers and themes. This also means that, removed from the contexts the authors are relating to, circulating through new international conduits, they are sometimes difficult to make sense of.

Society and Space is pleased to offer a conversation with Scott Rodgers, Clive Barnett, and Allan Cochrane, the authors of “Media practices and urban politics: conceptualizing the powers of the media-urban nexus.”

Martins’ engagement of the images she has selected to highlight, her interaction with protagonists, subject matter, and the motives of those who held the camera, is never allowed to detract from, or impinge on, what she has to say. Her myriad takes, rather, are threaded in to chapter content and argumentative thrust strategically and seamlessly, to illuminating effect.

Loukaki's book offers a comparative analysis of archetypal spatialities and their emergence in different moments of cultural history through various media, such as poetry, painting, urban landscape and architecture, and between polarities such as past/present and East/West. The book can be read as a montage of “snapshots” (page 14) or episodes that are interconnected, even if they seem to be antithetical to one another.